Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

But 60 Minutes has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file. Among them, a never-before-seen memorandum from May 1972, where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about "how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November."

Lt. Bush tells his commander "he is working on a campaign in Alabama?. and may not have time to take his physical." Killian adds that he thinks Lt. Bush has gone over his head, and is "talking to someone upstairs."

Col. Killian died in 1984. 60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic.

and

In a memo from Aug. 18, 1973, Col. Killian says Col. Buck Staudt, the man in charge of the Texas Air National Guard, is putting on pressure to "sugar coat" the evaluation of Lt. Bush. Staudt, a longtime supporter of the Bush family, would not do an interview for this broadcast.

There is no question that the document CBS is relying on was produced using Microsoft Word on a modern day computer/printer combo capable of kerning and proportional spacing and superscript -- not on any typewriter available in the early Seventies.

--------------------You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

Quote:Prisoner#1 said: it happens a great deal, reporters frequently jump the gun and have a story printed/aired before authentication can be made

I'm aware of that, but I was thinking more specifically about some who post on this site and whose nipples probably swelled at the news.

--------------------You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

These assholes can't keep from stepping on their dicks can they. How fucking stupid can they be? And that former Lieutenant Governor from Texas, I forget his name, who was on TV saying how he got W into the Guard has a, surprise, book coming out. I believe he testifiied under oath in 2000 that he did no such thing, but now he's feeling guilty. Well, someone called Monica Crowley's radio show this morning claiming to be his daughter Amy and she said that he's lying. This story is very fresh so we'll have to see what kind of confirmation will be forthcoming, but this is just too delicious.Rather with egg on his face eating crow face down in a dumpster is what we have here.

This is breaking news. Even that blogger didn't say 100%. But it sure doesn't look good for dipshit Dan. And that ex- lieutenant govs name is Ben Barnes. I also heard GMA is going to be running Kitty Kelly for three days to flog her book with unsubstantiated allegations of W's coke use. We'll see if this puts a chill in their panties about verifiability. Doubt it.

The reason I linked to a blog is that the mainstream press isn't on top of it yet. The same thing happened with the Swift Boat Vets. It was weeks before the mainstream press finally were (very reluctantly) forced into covering the story.

As for the memo itself, you can do the same thing the bloggers did. Images of the memo are available. Copies of Microsoft Word are available as well.

This story will make it to the mainstream media sooner or later. It's too blatant a hatchet job for even them to ignore.

Quote:pinksharkmark said:This story will make it to the mainstream media sooner or later. It's too blatant a hatchet job for even them to ignore.

pinky

Kind of like the swift boat vets I guess in that regard. Fucking politics, they inspire the worst in a lot of people. What exacerbates it is that a lot of people treat politics like they do religion and take it all on faith, which is just retarded.

Quote:pinksharkmark said:The difference is that the Swift Boat Vets didn't have to forge anything to make their point. They were able to use Kerry's own words.

pinky

Yeah, except that hardly any of the sbvt's were even there that day in question, several have either retracted their comments or had them called into question. Oh and there are several vets who are on the list who didn't even KNOW they were on the list, who in essence were victim to identity theft by that pig leader of the sbvt, who only wanted one thing.. to bring down the guy who told the world what sometimes went on in vietnam when he came back to be a peaceful protester. Bush has a track record for slandering his opponent's military record, this is just one of the worst.

Quote:pinksharkmark said:The difference is that the Swift Boat Vets didn't have to forge anything to make their point. They were able to use Kerry's own words.

pinky

Yeah, except that hardly any of the sbvt's were even there that day in question, several have either retracted their comments or had them called into question. Oh and there are several vets who are on the list who didn't even KNOW they were on the list, who in essence were victim to identity theft by that pig leader of the sbvt, who only wanted one thing.. to bring down the guy who told the world what sometimes went on in vietnam when he came back to be a peaceful protester. Bush has a track record for slandering his opponent's military record, this is just one of the worst.

What DAY are you talking about. There were several incidents they talk about. And please post a link to any source for these retracted statements. You should have no problem.

Bush isn't doing this. Why can't you understand that a great many veterans fucking hate Kerry for what he did after, labeling them baby-killers and criminals and then, while still in the service meeting with the N. Viets in Paris. He is a war hero in HANOI. He's in their museum. He didn't say that it went on sometimes, he said it was POLICY. Shit, I bet a lot of them hated him even before that because he is a pompous ass.

Sorry, which day are you talking about? If you mean the day that Kerry claims to have been in Cambodia, no one was there (in Cambodia) on that day, including Kerry -- as his own campaign flacks have been forced to admit.

Or do you mean the day he lied under oath to the Senate about war atrocities? (See "Winter Soldiers affair")

Or are you referring to the day that he, as a US naval officer, committed treason by meeting with representatives of the enemy in Paris during wartime?

Perhaps you meant the day he confessed on national television to having committed war crimes.

Do you believe that CBS news will investigate the guy who provided them with this document? Will they go digging for his ties to the Kerry campaign with the same vigor they try to connect the Swifties with Bush's campaign?

Quote: The reason I linked to a blog is that the mainstream press isn't on top of it yet. The same thing happened with the Swift Boat Vets. It was weeks before the mainstream press finally were (very reluctantly) forced into covering the story.

I hear you, I don't have a problem with you using them, I just think its funny when you disclaim other's proof when it is not from a "credible" source.

Here's what's so instructive about this affair. 60 Minutes (which like it or hate it, has been a staple of American TV for decades) didn't take the time to properly check the authenticity of these "documents" when they were checked and debunked by folks on the internet in a matter of hours. They claim they had an unnamed "expert" doing the checking, but I believe that's a flat-out lie. No expert (or even any secretary who had ever used Seventies-era typewriters) could possibly miss the kerning, proportional spacing, superscript, and "curly" apostrophes used.

That's why the instant the pdf file showing the typeface was available for scrutiny, about seventy-five different bloggers spotted the fake immediately -- it's just too clumsy to miss.

60 Minutes styles itself an "investigative journalism" show, but there was precious little investigation going on here. Dan Rather is so obviously left-leaning (one of the biggest Bush-bashers in the mainstream media, if not the biggest) that I wouldn't put it past him to have concocted these forgeries himself.

The WaPo requires registration, so I have excerpted some relevant portions of the lengthier article for those who choose not to register. The ABC link can be acessed by anyone, so I just provided the link. First, the Post --

Documents unearthed by CBS News that raise doubts about whether President Bush fulfilled his obligations to the Texas Air National Guard include several features suggesting that they were generated by a computer or word processor rather than a Vietnam War-era typewriter, experts said yesterday.

Experts consulted by a range of news organizations pointed out typographical and formatting questions about four documents as they considered the possibility that they were forged. The widow of the National Guard officer whose signature is on the bottom of the documents also disputed their authenticity. [pinky's note -- so does his son]

In a telephone interview from her Texas home, Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, described the records as "a farce," saying she was with her husband until the day he died in 1984 and he did not "keep files." She said her husband considered Bush "an excellent pilot."

"I don't think there were any documents. He was not a paper person," she said, adding that she was "livid" at CBS. A CBS reporter contacted her briefly before Wednesday night's broadcasts, she said, but did not ask her to authenticate the records.

CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards declined to respond to questions raised by experts who examined copies of the papers at the request of The Washington Post, or to provide the names of the experts CBS consulted. Experts interviewed by The Post pointed to a series of telltale signs suggesting that the documents were generated by a computer or word processor rather than the typewriters in widespread use by Bush's National Guard unit.

After their initial airing on the "CBS Evening News" and "60 Minutes II" programs Wednesday night, the documents were picked up by other news organizations, including The Post. A front-page story in The Post yesterday noted that CBS declined to provide details about the source of the documents, the authenticity of which could not be independently confirmed.

After doubts about the documents began circulating on the Internet yesterday morning, The Post contacted several independent experts who said they appeared to have been generated by a word processor. An examination of the documents by The Post shows that they are formatted differently from other Texas Air National Guard documents whose authenticity is not questioned.

William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. Documents generated by the kind of typewriters that were widely used in 1972 space letters evenly across the page, so that an "i" uses as much space as an "m." In the CBS documents, by contrast, each letter uses a different amount of space.

While IBM had introduced an electric typewriter that used proportional spacing by the early 1970s, it was not widely used in government. In addition, Flynn said, the CBS documents appear to use proportional spacing both across and down the page, a relatively recent innovation. Other anomalies in the documents include the use of the superscripted letters "th" in phrases such as 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Bush's unit.

"It would be nearly impossible for all this technology to have existed at that time," said Flynn, who runs a document-authentication company in Phoenix.

Other experts largely concurred. Phil Bouffard, a forensic document examiner from Cleveland, said the font used in the CBS documents appeared to be Times Roman, which is widely used by word-processing programs but was not common on typewriters.

You'll note that both these articles are more tentative than the bloggers have been. They largely rely on the words of professional documents examiners who (understandably) are cautious to state categorically that the docs are fakes without first handling the actual docs.

But it's a done deal. The fact that an actual overlay of a Microsoft Word document created yesterday with standard Microsoft Word default settings (try it yourself and see) will match to within fractions of a millimeter proves conclusively that there's no way these docs were created in 1972 and 1973.